We’ve Known for 2,000 Years

Like everyone else, I was grabbing for terra firma during the pandemic, particularly eager to lay my hands on a set of ideas that I could hold on to in the night, when I felt tossed by the high seas of change. As 2020 would have it, I found what I needed in an online class made available by Yale called the The Science and Philosophy of Human Nature taught by woman named Tamar Gendler.

At first I’d listen while walking. But at some point, maybe during lecture 3 of 26, I found I needed to be seated so I could take notes. The act of student-ing, after two-plus decades outside the…